Now and on Earth, Page 3

  I can’t say exactly how I got across. I remember falling down and skinning my knees and rolling, and there were a lot of horns blowing. And then I was on the other side. It was a quarter of seven, and I had a mile to go.

  I started off at a trot down the dirt road that curved around the bay. There was a steady procession of cars passing me, moving not a great deal faster than I was and so close that they brushed my clothes. But none of them stopped. Their passengers looked out at me phlegmatically, and looked away again. And I jogged on and on, red-faced, nervous, tongue hanging out—jogged along like a hound dog with a threshing crew. I wanted to spit through their windows, or grab up a handful of rocks and stone them. Most of all I wanted to be some place else. Where it was quiet and there were no people.

  Of course I knew why I wasn’t asked to ride. No car could very well stop in that traffic. The cars behind would push it ahead, even with the brakes on and the motor off. And practically all of them were loaded; and they couldn’t let me ride on the running board because there is a severely enforced ordinance against that.

  Nevertheless, I hated them. Almost as much as I did myself.

  I reached the plant just as the five-minute whistle was blowing. Actually, you’re supposed to be inside, standing ready at your station when the five-minute blows; but there were hundreds besides myself who weren’t. I fell into line in front of the gate that held my clock number. I was weak but I felt better. The sweating had done me good.

  There was a steady snapping of metal and rustling of paper as the gate guards examined each man’s lunch. One man, a new one doubtless, had his lunch wrapped in a newspaper. The line was held up while the guard untied the strings and unwrapped it.

  When I reached the guard in our line, he glanced at my badge and pass. Then, holding the pass in his hand, he plucked the badge from my jacket and gave me a shove through the other lines.

  “Over there. Chief’s desk.”

  I didn’t ask why. I thought I knew. For a moment it was in my mind to run. Then I thought, Well, if they really want me they’ll get me. So I stood at the desk until the chief in his military cap and Sam Browne belt looked up. His face was fat and cold; his eyes shrewd.

  “What number?”

  “Huh?”

  “Number, number. What’s your clock number?”

  “Oh.” I told him what it was.

  He reached into a drawer and pulled out another badge and a yellow isinglass enclosed card. It bore the picture they had taken of me the day before, my name, age, and a detailed physical description.

  “This is your permanent badge, and number. Punch it hereafter. This is your identification card. Don’t lose, lend, or forget either one. You’ll need them to get through the gate and while you’re inside. If you leave them at home, it’ll cost you fifty cents for us to send a messenger after them. If you lose them, it will be a dollar. Understand? All right. Good luck.”

  I punched in, and walked through the crowded yard to the plant entrance.…Relieved? That’s not the right word. Maybe I’ll tell you why some time.

  The stockroom gate was locked, as usual. I could see Moon and Busken and Vail up in the Purchased-Parts section talking, but evidently they didn’t see me. Gross, the bookkeeper, was on his stool, absorbedly manicuring his fingernails. I walked around to the window.

  “How about letting me in?” I said.

  He looked up. He is a handsome fellow, with his well-shaped head, dark eyes and hair, but so ruggedly built that he appears awkward. He was dressed impeccably in a doeskin jacket and brown whipcord pants.

  “Crawl through the window,” he suggested, pleasantly enough.

  “How about the sign that says not to?”

  “That don’t mean anything. I crawl through all the time.”

  I scrambled through just as the seven-o’clock whistle was blowing, and bumped into Moon as I swung my feet to the floor.

  “I wouldn’t do that any more if I were you,” he said. “There’s a rule against it.”

  I looked at Gross. He was uncovering his typewriter, his back turned toward us.

  “All right,” I said. “What would you like to have me do today?”

  “Get these parts off the floor the first thing.”

  “What—”

  But he had turned away. Moon is something over six feet tall, very dark, and so thin that he seems to float rather than walk.

  There was a short squat young man who looked like a Mexican moving around in the paper-carpeted area which held the night’s accumulation of parts. As I came up, he picked up an armful and headed back toward the racks. I picked up another armful and followed him.

  He disposed of his load, moving quickly along the shelves and cribs, and was going to pass me by on his way to the front.

  I stopped him.

  “Where do these go?” I said.

  He glanced at them, pulled several pieces from my arms, and put them up.

  “The others don’t go here,” he said, moving away again.

  I moved along with him. “Where do they go, then?”

  “Tank flanges to Welding; straps to Sub-assembly; compression-rib brackets to Sheet-metal.”

  “How come they were brought in here?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Those straps used to be ours; used to put ’em on out in Final Assembly. Routing’s wrong on the others.”

  We were back at the front now.

  “Just put ’em down on the floor,” he said. “I’ll grab a move-boy pretty soon. Want to stack those ribs? They’re all ours.”

  He pointed them out to me and indicated the racks in which they belonged. I loaded a hand-truck, wheeled them back to the racks, and began to unload. It was pretty slow work, and not entirely because of my hangover. The ribs had a tendency to catch on the paper, which had to be put down between layers, and shove it out the other side. And, despite their size, they were so light that a push on one would put the entire stack in disarray.

  When noon came I hadn’t disposed of more than two-thirds of the ribs, and I was so nervous that I forgot how weak and hungry I was. I went to the toilet and washed, and I had a couple of cigarettes in the yard. Then I came back in and went to work again.

  I guess it was around one o’clock when the dark-skinned fellow dropped by. He seemed to have a few minutes to spare.

  “How you doing?” he inquired. And, before I could answer, “Say! You’re not mixing those together, are you?”

  He fingered along the shelves, sliding out one here, one there. “Can’t you see the difference in those two? One’s slotted on one side and one on the other. And these—see?—the rivet holes are spaced differently. On one kind they come in pairs. In the other they’re evenly spaced.”

  Well, and why the hell didn’t you tell me there was more than one kind, I thought. But I just thought it.

  “Any others I’ve mixed up?” I said, weakly.

  “You ought to put part of these in your opposite rack. They’re a right-hand rib, all right; but they use one of them in each left wing. The same thing goes for the left-hand rib of this type. You’ve got one left-right rib, and one right-left rib in each wing.”

  “Here’s where I give up,” I said. And I meant it.

  “You’ll catch on in time,” he grinned. “That’s all it takes is a little time.”

  “How am I going to straighten this out?”

  “Well—” he looked over his shoulder, “I’ve got an order to throw out to Tailcone, but—but, well, I’ll help you.”

  It must have taken him all of thirty minutes to do the job.

  Moon came around just as he had finished.

  “Got that tailcone stuff out yet, Murphy?” he said. “They’re hollering for it.”

  I glanced at my dark-skinned acquaintance. Now I might make a mistake on ribs, I thought, but I know a Mexican when I see one. At least, he’s certainly no Irishman.

  “It’s my fault if there’s any delay,” I said, as he hurried off. “I mixed these ribs up and Murp
hy was straightening me out.”

  “How’d you happen to mix ’em up?” asked Moon. “Where’s the travelers on them?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what a traveler is.”

  He turned and jerked his head for me to follow him. At the front counter he stopped, and I stopped. He reached down to the shelf beneath it, opened his lunch pail, and took out an apple. He bit into it, chewed and swallowed, and moved over to Gross’s desk.

  “Gross,” said Moon—chomp, chomp—“did you find any wing travelers kicking around today?”

  “Yeah,” said Gross. “I picked up three—four, I guess it was.”

  “Let’s see ’em.”

  The travelers were blue cardboard squares covered from top to bottom with print. “They carry every process that goes into the making of a certain part,” Moon explained. “They follow the parts right down the processing line, and when they get here we put our count on ’em, and give ’em to Gross who enters ’em in the books.…Yeah, those ribs you put up will have to be counted. Gross can do it after while.”

  “Why I can do it,” I said. “It was my mistake.”

  “Gross can do it. He’s not very busy.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Gross.

  Moon took a final mouthful of apple, pulled a wooden box up to the fence, and stepped up on it. About fifty feet away a guard was leaning against a pillar, his back to us. Moon took a slow unhurried look around the plant, brought his arm back deliberately, and hurled the apple core. It struck the guard on the framed front of his cap, pushing it down over his eyes, bounced high into the air and landed in the cockpit of a plane.

  Moon stepped down, unsmiling. “Now, let’s get busy,” he said, “and sweep this place out.”

  5

  Gross was directly behind me when I punched out my card, and he followed me through the gate.

  “Got a ride home?” he asked.

  “No, I haven’t,” I said.

  “Why don’t you walk down here with me to my car?”

  I said thanks, I’d appreciate it, and we walked along together, working our way through the double stream of traffic that was already beginning to flow toward Pacific Boulevard.

  “What do you think of that guy, Moon?” he asked. “Did you ever see anybody so screwy in your life?”

  I laughed. “He’s got his peculiarities, all right.”

  “He’s crazy,” said Gross, “and I don’t care who tells him I said so. He’s been riding me ever since I went to work here.”

  I was rather anxious to divert the conversation to another subject. “Have you been here quite a while?”

  “I’ve been in the plant four months. I only started in the stockroom three weeks ago. I worked down in Drop-hammer the rest of the time.”

  “You like this work better?”

  “I’d like it if Moon wasn’t so crazy and wouldn’t ride me all the time. I ain’t used to that riding. He don’t like me because Personnel put me in there without asking him about it. I went over and talked to the personnel man, see; told him about my education, and how I wanted a chance to use it. We had a real nice talk. He’s a nice fellow. He’s quite a sports fan, and when he found out I was All-American, he really got interested. A few days after that they fired the bookkeeper they had in the stockroom—even Moon admits he wasn’t any good—and gave me the job.”

  He stopped and opened the door of an old Chevrolet sedan.

  “What do you think of Murphy?” he said, one foot on the running board.

  “How do you mean?” I said.

  Gross snorted. “Did you ever see anyone that looked more like a Mexican in your life?”

  “Well—no.”

  “And he calls himself Murphy! I think they ought to do something about that, don’t you?”

  “Why—I don’t know.”

  “Say,” said Gross, “didn’t you just get through saying he was a Mexican?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I mean—”

  “Well, all right, then,” he said.

  He climbed into the car, settled himself, and looked at me with veiled amusement.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you. This isn’t my car; it belongs to another guy. I don’t know just when he’ll be out, and I think he’s going to have a load. Maybe you’d better go on.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll do that.”

  “Any time I’ve got my own car,” he called after me, “I’ll be glad to give you a ride.”

  “Thanks,” I said, without turning around.

  I knew he was laughing, and it embarrassed me. It always embarrasses me to see meanness in others, even when it is directed at me. I wince for them.

  It wasn’t until late that night that I thought about what I’d said and how it would sound repeated to Murphy. And I was confident that it was going to be repeated. It was, because it just isn’t natural for me to do or say anything without trouble ensuing. Of course, I could protect myself by going to Murphy first and explaining that Gross had put words in my mouth. But then what if Gross didn’t intend to tell Murphy, after all? I’d have started something. Murphy would confront Gross with my story, and I would be called as a witness. If Gross admitted it, I’d be a tattletale. If he said I was lying—well, what could I do?

  I don’t think I’m actually afraid of Gross. I’ve had my ears batted down so many times that I know there’s nothing to be less fearful of than physical pain. I am only afraid of him in that he can worry me, and I do not know how I can stand much more. I’ve got to pull myself together.

  The next morning, right after I had crossed Pacific and started down the dirt road, a car began to honk behind me. To hear a car horn in San Diego is an unusual thing; I think there’s an ordinance against it. I looked around; it was Moon. He was driving a late model Buick, and the front door was swinging open. I hopped in.

  When we reached the plant, he parked in a reserved space. And I thanked him and started to get out.

  “Wait a minute, Dillon—Dilly. It’s only six-thirty.”

  We lighted cigarettes, and he looked at me appraisingly. He is about thirty, I think.

  “We’re about the same size, Dilly.”

  I said yes, we were, wondering what was coming next. I don’t think Moon is screwy, as Gross puts it. I think he simply says and does whatever is on his mind.

  “I’ve got the edge on you for weight, though,” I said.

  “I can’t put on any weight,” he said. “I can’t stop sleeping with my wife.”

  I laughed.

  “Every time I think I’m going to,” he said, “she fixes me a big batch of egg sandwiches. I told her last night that that was going to have to last a while, and this morning she fixed me six egg sandwiches for my lunch. You’d think she’d been living in China instead of me.”

  “You were in China?”

  “Eighteen months in the interior. Petty officer. The last of my hitch in the navy.…Ever do any clerical work, Dilly?”

  “Yes. It’s not in my line, but I’ve done it.”

  “The trouble with keeping records in a place like this,” he said, “is that you’ve got to know parts. Just being a bookkeeper and a typist and so on isn’t enough. Now Gross had four months’ experience in another plant before he came here, so he knows parts pretty well. At least he should know them pretty well.”

  “I certainly don’t know much about them,” I said.

  “I’ll have to show you around a little,” he said. “I’ve been pretty busy before or I’d’ve already done it. You remind me of it some time today.”

  I went into the plant feeling, somehow, better than I had felt in a long time. Of course, I should know, by now, that no one is going to do anything for me unless there is a catch to it. But I keep right on getting caught with my guard down.

  The boys in Purchased Parts had received several kegs of bolts and washers, and we had got in very few parts; so I was delegated to help them put their parts in the bins. Thus I witnessed another example of the humor o
f Busken and Vail.

  All these small parts are magnafluxed; that is, they are dipped in a blue-dye bath. Partly to prevent corrosion, I believe; partly to show up any flaws which they may have. Of course, the dye rubs off easily. By the time I had worked five minutes, my hands were dripping with the stuff.

  Well, a youth in a white shirt came up to the counter. One of the stock-chasers. Vail quickly slipped on a pair of gloves. Busken darted around behind the racks and went through the gate.

  “Why, if it isn’t my old pal, Jack!” said Vail heartily, striding forward with his right hand extended and tugging at the glove thereon. “Where you been keeping yourself, Jack?”

  “Now, none of your jokes,” said Jack, extending his hand nonetheless. “I’m in a—”

  Vail immediately shed his gloves and seized the out-thrust hand, massaging it vigorously.

  “How are you, Jack, ol’ boy, ol’ boy?” he demanded, rubbing in the dye. “I say, ol’ boy, do you think it’ll rain? Do you think—”

  “You son-of-a-bitch!” snarled Jack. “Leggo, goddammit! I told you I was in a—”

  Busken stepped up behind him, and slapped him on the back, clamped two blue palms against the white shirt-sleeves, giggling.

  “Why, what’s the matter with Jack—he, he?” he inquired. “He, he, he—did ’oo get ’oo ’ittle hands dirty?”

  “Yes, I did!” snapped Jack. “This crazy son-of-a-bitch—” Then he saw the havoc that had been done to his shirt. “Why, you bastard!” he yelled. “Look what you done to my shirt! God damn you, if I—”

  Vail seized the left hand also; held both in a firm grip.

  “Jack’s just tired,” he informed Busken. “He’s been out in the heat too long. You come inside, Jack. It’s twenty degrees cooler inside.”

  He leaned back and pulled, trying to pull the hapless Jack across the counter. Busken was almost dancing with glee.

  “Throw me the broom, Dilly!” he chortled. “We’ll give ol’ Jack—he, he—a prostate. Want a nice massage, Jackie? He, he!”